Donny stood at the bar with a stupid grin on his face. He set another beer down at my seat along with a shot glass of dark amber liquid. "Here you go."
Nervously, I pointed at the hard liquor. "What's that?"
"Jack Daniels. That one is on me too."
"You don't have to do that."
"Sure, I do. It's not every day you see the girl who broke your heart."
"I guess not."
I pretended like I knew what I was doing and slammed the shot down. Instantly, my throat felt like it was on fire. To keep from choking, I took a long drink from the beer.
And, yes. It bothered me that Donny kept saying Jessica dumped me. It simply wasn't true, though it's not like I stayed in town afterward to make sure everyone got the correct story. If that's what Jessica or more likely her friends told people, it shouldn't matter. But it did hurt that she ran straight to Jim.
My hand remained tightly around the beer bottle. "I don't get it. Jim McGrath was such a jerk in high school."
Donny shrugged his shoulders. "I always thought that he was Ok."
"Jim McGrath?" I raised an eyebrow.
He nodded. "Yeah."
I suddenly remembered Donny had played football with Jim. Which was why it was a surprise when Donny connected with me on social media. We hadn't exactly been friends. Though truthfully, I barely remembered Donny. Not that I remembered much of anyone outside of my small circle of friends. The rest of our class blended together into composite stereotypes in my head.
Donny said, "Maybe, you're confusing Jim with someone else."
"Maybe— "
If anything, I was confusing Donny with one of Jim's goons. I forced myself to loosen the grip on my beer bottle. "Do Jessica and Jim come in here often?"
Donny shook his head. "No. Not that often, but sometimes Jim will stop in for a beer after work."
"What does he do for a living?"
"Jim's in the Iron Workers Union. He's worked on the Little Caesar Arena and the new Dan Gilbert building."
"Interesting." Maybe, Jim had changed. Maybe, he wasn't a jerk anymore if he could balance a job and a young family.
Donny said, "Do you mind if I ask you a weird question?"
Expecting it to be about Jessica, I reluctantly said, "Go ahead."
"Do you believe in Bigfoot?"
"Umm ... I believe in the possibility that the North American wilderness could support a species of wood ape.
Donny smiled. "I see you're a cryptozoology nut too."
"I wouldn't have pegged you for one."
"I love the study of undiscovered species. When I'm not working, I spend most of my free time out in the woods, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sasquatch."
"So you believe in Bigfoot?" I asked.
"I don't believe. I know. Last year, I heard one howl in the U.P."
"Awesome. What about the Loch Ness monster?"
"Never been to Scotland, but I don't think the Loch Ness monster is real," Donny replied. "I think it's either a large eel or a Greenland shark. Probably both, and it's been misidentified at different times."
"I think you're right. Nothing as big as a plesiosaur could live in that fishless lake for this long."
Donny nodded. "Exactly, but I believe there could be something in the ocean depths that we haven't discovered yet."
"What about the Chupacabra?"
"Coyotes with mange."
"They say it's a bear with mange in that trail camera photo of the juvenile Bigfoot," I said.
Donny slammed his hand down on the bar. "That's bullshit!"
Patrons looked in his direction, but he ignored them as he took several deep breaths. "Sorry, I get worked up over Sasquatch."
"What do you think they are exactly?"
"I think they are from a branch of the Homo tree, just like Homo Neanderthal, Homo Denisovan, and Homo Floresiensis. You know that we all have some Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in us?"
"I heard that."
"Our whole gene pool is mixed up. Did you know scientists claimed Floresiensis was a Homo Sapiens with a birth defect until they found eight more skeletons just like it, and they had to admit hobbits were real? Scientists suck with new discoveries if they weren't the ones to discover it."
I finished my beer. "I didn't know about the hobbit line of Homo."
Donny nodded. "It's true. They tried to keep it a secret. My money says that Sasquatch is an ancestor of Homo Habilis. There's that one lady in Texas who had all those hair samples tested and said that they came back part human. But the state-run labs lied and said it was deer DNA."
I shook my head. "Why would they lie?"
He cracked open another bottle of beer and traded it for the empty one on the wet napkin in front of me. "Think about it. The public would go nuts if they found out there was a cousin to Homo Sapiens running around the forest who can rip your arm out of the socket. And the government can't control or capture it."
"They can't?"
"No. That's why the Feds work so hard to cover it up. Do you know how many people go missing in our National Parks each year?"
"No." I took a sip from my third beer. "How many? Ten? Twenty?"
'Hundreds."
"Each year?"
"Yes. Each year."
"I find that hard to believe."
"It's a fact. You can look it up."
I made a mental note to do that later if I didn't get too intoxicated, but it was unlikely given how much I had drunk already. With alcohol guiding my tongue, I moved to an even crazier topic. "Speaking of government cover-ups, what do you think about aliens? Are they real?"
Donny rolled his eyes. "They're real. Didn't you see the UFO footage of the Tic-tac ship that was released by the Linkin Park guitarist?"
I nodded. "Couldn't it be advanced technology developed by the US military?"
"If we had that, don't you think we'd be using it against the Russians or the Chinese? If the government has a UFO, it would be an old spaceship that they found buried in the desert like the one Bob Lazar claims we're trying to reverse-engineer. Did you see his documentary?"
"No."
"It's on Netflix. You should watch it. I'm not saying Lazar's story is true, but a few ships from Groom Lake can't account for all the sightings. There has to be more."
"So, who is flying these ships? Little grey men?"
"I think there are several different alien races. Or— ." He pointed a finger at me. "Or it could be humans from before the last ice age, who now live in colonies under the ocean or Antarctica or on the dark side of the moon."
I sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. "I heard there is nothing on the dark side of the moon except a Pink Floyd album."
He raised his chin defiantly. "Are you making fun of me?"
"No. Definitely not."
"Good. Because I thought we were really connecting here."
Truthfully, we were kind of bonding. I couldn't remember the last time that I'd talked with someone this long outside of my parents or a co-worker.
"No, it's just that I heard the Chinese launched a space probe last summer to the dark side of the moon, and they didn't find anything."
"Damn! I didn't hear that. This alien question is a tough one. Give me some more time, and I will figure it out. Just you watch."
"I bet you will."
Donny scooped up the wet napkin that had been my coaster and wiped the spot dry with a small white rag. He tossed the towel in the sink behind him and turned back to face me holding a fresh beer and another napkin. He set them down in front of me.
With a serious look in his eye, he said, "Brian, you're not asking me the most important question of all?"
"What's that?" I asked.
"Do I believe in themultiverse?"